1. Field of the Invention
A disposable tongue stabilizer is adhesively attached to a laryngoscope blade to position the tongue during intubation.
2. Description of Related Art
In many emergency situations in order to save lives or give anesthetics for surgery in operating rooms, physicians have to use intubation procedures to establish an artificial airway. During these intubation procedures laryngoscopes are used by physicians as an instrument to keep the tongue out of the way in order to visualize the epiglottis so that an endotracheal tube can be inserted into the trachea.
The problem is that all the laryngoscope blades on the market now are narrow and can hold only approximately half of the tongue, so that it is very hard to make the tongue stay on the laryngoscope blade with any degree of stability. The epiglottis is very difficult to visualize and the endotracheal tube is very hard to insert into the trachea as the tongue gets in the way.
If the patent has a cardiac or respiratory arrest, the critical period is four minutes, and quite often the tube cannot be placed into the trachea within that critical time period. Consequently, the patient will have needless suffering, from irreversible brain damage, or death can occur.
It is old in the art to control the tongue while working in the mouth. G. Hull (U.S. Pat. No. 2,723,662, issued 15 Nov. 1955), and A. Pagoto (U.S. Pat. No. 2,765,785, issued 9 Oct. 1956), and M. Inoue (U.S. Pat. No. 4,589,848, issued 20 May 1986) are examples of tongue depressors. D. Van Dam (U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,738, issued 19 Nov. 1991) and J. Nash (U.S. Pat. No. 5,438,976, issued 8 Aug. 1995) and S. Dahibeck (U.S. Pat. No. 5,536,245, issued 16 Jul. 1996) are examples of using adhesive to secure protective padding or a sensor to laryngoscope blades. W. Sun (U.S. Pat. No. 4,834,077, issued 20 May 1989 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,499, issued 25 Dec. 1990) are examples of laryngoscope blade sheaths used to position the tongue during intubation.